Introduction In their report of a meeting at Reisensburg, the RCMNS working group on fossil mammals presented ranges of Neogene mammal genera (De Bruijn et al, 1992). However, no erinaceid, talpid or shrew can be found in the tables. The working group concluded (p. 70); "The omission of all the insectivores is regretted, but the participants of the Reisensburg meeting consider this order insufficiently known at this moment." In 1990, this position was justifiable if not justified. Mammal studies up until then had focused on the stratigraphical position of the various faunas. The insectivores, far less numerous than the rodents, usually played a minor role in these studies and were either identified provisionally or not included at all. Detailed descriptions of insectivores were usually furnished in monographs (e.g. Doben-Florin, 1964; Müller, 1967; Repenning, 1967; Engesser, 1975; Ziegler, 1983; Reumer, 1984; Rümke, 1985). However, already in the 1970s and 1980s, some palaeontologists were specializing in insectivores, resulting, for example, in a complete series on the Pliocene and Pleistocene insectivores from Poland (Rzebik-Kowalska, 1971, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1989, 1990a, b, 1991), and overviews from insectivores from Spain (Gibert, 1974, 1975) and Anatolia (Engesser, 1980).Around the time of the Reisenburg conference, a change was taking place in mammal palaeontology. As it became clear that our climate was changing, palaeontologists focused more and more on environmental changes in the past. In mammal palaeontology, this implied that not just taxa that were interesting as stratigraphical markers needed